Posted 1 year ago on June 7, 2013, 8:24 a.m. EST by therising
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New York Times: "The reports [NSA tracking all US phone records, emails, web searches] came as President Obama was traveling to meet President Xi Jinping of China at an estate in Southern California, a meeting intended to address among other things complaints about Chinese cyberattacks and spying. Now that conversation will take place amid discussion of America’s own vast surveillance operations on its own citizens." Full article http://nyti.ms/19LxW8u (note: the New York Times changed its language in article this morning and dropped the phrase "on its own citizens".

The surveillance operations were initially targeting foreign countries and foreigners but in our globalized world, they scoop up information of U.S. citizens as well, and yes, to our horror, with the BLESSING of Congressional oversight and expanded under the business clause to nearly all U.S. citizens.

FISA court's safeguarding our constitutional right protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures was an utter joke under the Bush'ite administration and we apparently had had a continuous change of administration in January 2009 instead of a discontinuous change as promised by candidate Obama. The promised most transparent administration turns out to mean having the most transparent view of our citizens' lives by the administration.

But this is about way more than an administration. Congress was in on this too. Members of both parties. This isn't just a scandal that brings down administrations. This is a scandal that brings down governments.

This is a scandal that should bring down governments. When Julian Assange said on CBS this morning that governments exist to protect people's rights, he was immediately redirected to the subject of Bradley Manning.

The MSM will score big points with the American people as, "putting fear", in government, while the MSM will continue to control the story. Remember, the Oligarchy owns the MSM.

In a sense, every U.S. citizen, regardless of parties, was in on this because in principle, Congress and administrations all work for us.

If we are so offended by these revelations, we should all really look at our mirrors, ask the hard question, "How much freedom must we kill off so that we can save the freedom remaining?" and answer it honestly.

I think this is a totally false choice. Please see **below. This is NOT protecting us against terrorism.

NSA's monitoring includes all AT&T and Sprint customers, and their email records and web searches http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922?mg=reno64-wsj ( ****The video at top of article interestingly points out that this intrusion into millions of Americans lives won't even help catch terrorists because fortunately there aren't enough terrorists to develop patterns. This NSA program is about something else entirely: maintaining power by spying on citizens.

Mr. Obama once railed, when he said in 2007 that the surveillance policy of the George W. Bush administration “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”

I heard about "We must kill freedom in order to save it!" so I thought that my suggestion would provide an improved choice, as glorious a quantum leap as quantum computing would be relative to digital computing.

I have always maintained that Obama knew the tricks that Nixon did so these revelations did not tip my scale much but they apparently registered on many people's Ritter scale. There was that huge facility that was being built in Utah for data storage. A curious person had to question what it was for and those who know situational awareness could read the story that it told.

The tone of the New York Times article and the title shifted pretty significantly between 11 pm and 6 am. Late night it came across much more harshly. By early morning it gave detractors a few outs -- "we'll, it's only on foreigners" etc. That was nearly absent from earlier version.